The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Generally, in the mating of two connectors, there is no preferable guiding device designed between a receptacle and a plug. Therefore, a lot time is spent on alignment in a mating process. If the plug deviates or is misplaced by a small angle, the socket cannot mate with the plug smoothly, which may even cause damages to the connector structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,226,314 discloses a receptacle connector that has an insulative body and a guide shell. The insulative body contains a mating groove that is hollowed backward from a front end surface of the insulative body. Multiple terminal grooves are provided at two opposite sidewalls of the mating groove to accommodate multiple terminals. The guide shell comprises an accommodating space formed by an upper plate and two partition plates. The upper plate bends toward the accommodating space to form two elastic arms, and the guide shell is located at a front end of an opening of the mating groove of the insulative body, so that the insulative body and the guide shell are assembled to form the receptacle connector.
In the patent, the guide shell is fixed at the front end of the opening of the mating groove of the insulative body. When the receptacle connector mates with a plug connector, the plug connector is guided by the elastic arms, and may efficiently provide quick positioning of upper and lower vertical positions, so that a tongue of the plug connector is accurately inserted in the mating groove, and the plug connector is accommodated in the accommodating space of the guide shell, thereby reducing time wasted when alignment cannot be performed accurately in mating of the connector. However, in the patent, when the tongue of the plug connector mates with the receptacle connector, although alignment in a vertical direction can be accurately provided, a solution regarding alignment in a horizontal direction is not provided. Therefore, the connector is not accurately aligned in the horizontal direction in mating of the connector. As a result, the tongue may easily deviate to the left or the right. Because the tongue is not accurately aligned, the insulative body of the receptacle connector may be easily scratched, causing damages to the insulative body, and further affecting service life of the receptacle connector.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need to design a new electrical connector exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.